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The cabin stood above a little gully which skirted the dividing line of the pastures, facing, in its primitive nudity, the level stretch of the shadowless highway. It was a rotting, one-room dwelling, with a wide doorway opening upon a small, bare strip of ground where a gnarled oak grew.

In "boarding round" I often found myself in one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the sole partition a sheet or a blanket, behind which I slept with one or two of the children. It was the custom on these occasions for the man of the house to delicately retire to the barn while we women got to bed, and to disappear again in the morning while we dressed.

It is the best plan we know of where the conditions are favorable; but it is probable that the one-room rural school will remain with us for a long time to come. Indeed there are some good reasons why it should remain.

The majority of them were living from hand to mouth on rented land, in small, one-room log cabins, and attempting to pay a rate of interest on their advances that ranged from fifteen to forty per cent per annum. The school had been taught in a wreck of a log cabin, with no apparatus, and had never been in session longer than three months out of twelve.

Many nights we shared a one-room cabin with all the members of the family. But the greatest hardship we suffered was the lack of water. There was very little good water in the state, and the purest water was so brackish that we could hardly drink it. The more we drank the thirstier we became, and when the water was made into tea it tasted worse than when it was clear.

It yielded to his touch, and after a moment's hesitation he stepped inside, and groping, found the lamp. Touching a match to the wick, he replaced the cracked chimney and looked about him. Gone! The little one-room dwelling was in chaos, the chest of drawers ransacked and even the two poor beds had been pulled violently apart. Everything spoke of hasty and frenzied flight. What could it mean?

In the country one-room school there will be found but few boys over fourteen years of age, but a great deal can be done with the younger boys in some such way as follows: As school "lets out" in the afternoon the minister is on hand. The boys have been under a woman teacher all day and are glad to meet a man who will lead them in vigorous play.

Now my opportunity had arrived, and though the fire was filling the one-room log house with a blaze of light, I made haste to discard my clothes for now the older people were all sound asleep. In a few moments I was in the very act of slipping on the coveted garment when I heard a peal of merriment behind me.

Nelka spent a whole winter in one of these villages, living in a one-room hut with a peasant family and sleeping on a wooden bench. What a contrast after the social life of Washington! Here is a descriptive letter written from Kalakshinovka, District of Samara, in 1912: "I am in a desert of snow, in quiet and peace, and feeding three villages.

He pushed on in the direction whence the sound came, cowering before the wind and the rain, and at last saw a light. It might be Yankees or it might not be Yankees, but Prescott now did not care which, intent as he was upon food and shelter. The light led him at last to an unpainted, one-room shanty in the woods by the railroad track, a telegraph station.